It looks like several companies are learning what happens when you mess with the internet - and they're learning it the hard way. Several major companies have been hit by the collective powers of Anonymous after 4chan launched several distributed denial-of-service attacks. What many have been predicting for a long time now has finally happened: an actual war between the powers that be on one side, and the internet on the other. Update: PayPal has admitted their WikiLeaks snub came after pressure from the US government, and Datacell, which takes care of payments to Wikileaks, is threatening to sue MasterCard over Wikileaks' account suspension. Update II: Visa.com is down due to the attack. Update III: PayPal has caved under the pressure, and will release the funds in the WikiLeaks account.

You get all kinds of ineffectual people when things like this go on, but for every thousand of those who who wouldn't know a ping of death from a phishing scam there are one or two who own a piece of a botnet. And, for some of these people, the internet is srsbzns, and wikileaks is part of the internet.

Don't be fooled in to thinking that the people who post cats on 4chan are the same ones making these headlines. Think of 4chan as more of a cheering squad: You can't be blamed for supporting the DDoSers if no one knows your name.